[patchwork]

Um, PTTG...that's what actually happened, historically. Software and operation (not hardware) was "women's work" through the 70s until the early 80s. What killed it was the rise of the PC; people would spend a few hundred dollars to buy one for their son but not their daughter. By about '83 you have a cadre of new college students where the boys have 6 years experience with the things and the girls don't...and 6 years after that, you have the idea fairly well entrenched that girls can't program. It was a startlingly quick change.

To make it otherwise, you have to seriously screw with the PC revolution. Either you halt/screw up patents somehow, so progress comes to a screeching halt but prices come down so that people will spend the money on their daughters too; or you restrict them, declare them too dangerous to give to someone under 18 (or most private parties, but still let schools, companies etc have them). Either of those decisions will be hard to get to and have negative side-effects.